[faksta]

II Moscow - St.-Petersberg run.

The second race between Russian capitals was dropped on 1900 August, 7 and obviously wasn’t the most popular race from drivers’ point of view. Cars were presented by only two competitors – Mazy on Starley-Psycho 3.5hp voiturette and J.G.Genrik (France) on Mors 4hp car. Genrik was a new Clement director in St.-Petersberg after Mazy had joined Starley. But even those two entrants were more than one starter driving a tricycle – Deschamps on his DeDion-Bouton 2.25hp, who have already won Luga-St.-Petersberg race. However, this time he won again. Partly due to both cars retirement, partly to his speed – at average 26,282 km/h he spent 26 hours and 17 minutes on 650 versts distance. That was a record for a three-wheeler – Mazy’s previous year time was beaten by 15 minutes.

Race results:

1. Deschamps 26:23.00
Ret. Mazy
Ret. Genrik

First Russian Hillclimb

Arranged as an equivalent of French hillclimb competitions, the race happened on July, 2 was a first ever hillclimb in Russia. It provided some useful information for further automotive industry development. It concerned gearboxes – the cars fitted with them behaved much better going up the hill than ones with only one gear. Almost all period drivers tried their best in a competition held on a hill near Krasnoe Selo going up from Strelna side, but Pavel Belyaev on 31/2hp Vivinus car appeared to be the best there (4:21.8 minutes).
What is interesting for me here is that there was at least one time better than Belyaev’s – Prussakov on DeDion ran for 3:30.2. Maybe it was a DeDion tricycle, not a car, thus belonged to another category – I don’t know for sure.